Memphis Ismaili CIVIC Day Volunteers, along with partners from Memphis City Beautiful and the Tennessee Delta Alliance, will come together for a “youth-led” waterway and green space clean up in the city.
September 24th will mark the third annual Global Ismaili CIVIC Day. Volunteers are celebrating by cleaning up waterways and green spaces at 2526 North Highland Street in Memphis from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Event organizers said this is part of a collective clean-up of 14 waterways and green spaces in the Southwest region. They also said this is an effort to “remove trash and invasive plant species from waterways and improve water quality and the health of the local ecosystem.”
The Tennessee Delta Alliance said this event is in alignment with their purpose to “improve eco-tourism in the five counties that touch the Mississippi River in Tennessee.
“Aligning our organization for this purpose is a great move to help improve this area of West Tennessee,” said Edmond McDavis III, director of TDA. “This cleanup will prevent a lot of trash from reaching the river, and hopefully the efforts of the volunteers from Memphis, the state of Tennessee, and the world on this day will inspire others to continue to assist in events such as these on a regular basis to continue to fight litter, an unfortunate problem in our society today.”
Ismaili CIVIC organizers said in a statement that the clean-ups are guided by “a commitment to environmental stewardship grounded in Islam’s core values of service, peace, compassion, and care for our environment.”
“Volunteers participating in this year’s cleanup are united by their shared ethic of environmental stewardship,” they added.
This event also aligns with global themes of environmental stewardship, poverty alleviation, and community health of Ismaili CIVIC Day, according to The Ismaili, the official group of the Ismaili Muslim community.
“Ismaili CIVIC Day aims to improve the quality of life of the vulnerable, irrespective of their origin, faith, or gender and unites the global Ismaili community in its centuries-old tradition of voluntary service to the communities in which it lives,” said the group.